India

The Pulwama attack was clearly calibrated to pile pressure on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the run-up to the general election to be held in April and May 2019. The location and the target – paramilitary police deployed in Kashmir as part of an on-going effort to quell unrest that has

A suicide attack on the Indian forces in Pulwama, Kashmir that killed more than 40 security officials has set India and Pakistan – two nuclear powers ­– on a warpath. India has blamed Pakistan for sponsoring the attack, while Pakistan has denied any involvement, blaming India for its human

That India’s 14th prime minister is a gifted storyteller is well-known. An author of several children’s storybooks, Narendra Modi has in the past few years not only trumpeted the narrative of a poor tea-seller making his way to the highest office in the land but has also controlled every

The attack on a convoy of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) on 14 February is one of the most serious single strikes against security forces in the troubled region of Kashmir. Travelling from Jammu to Srinagar in the South Kashmir Pulwama district, a vehicle laden with 350 kilograms of

With its mammoth general elections due in April or May, Indian politics is entering full-bodied election mode. India’s 900 million voters are set to decide whether to return Prime Minister Narendra Modi to office, or not, in elections that some are describing as the most important since

Among the many questions raised by the massive modernisation and expansion of China’s Navy in the last few years is its future role in the Indian Ocean. Will the Indian Ocean become a Chinese lake?
China has gone from essentially zero presence in the Indian Ocean around a decade ago to a fairly

Over the past two years, police in the Indian state Uttar Pradesh are alleged to have carried out 59 extrajudicial killings. The events have sparked an inquiry by a panel of four United Nations independent experts on human rights, which in a statement this month “expressed alarm” about the

It is January; a month that, in north India, once fell in the season of winter, but now is more synonymous with the depths of the region’s dreaded pollution season. This month, as in recent years, a brutal combination of diverse factors has continued to coalesce to produce dire air quality in its

Last month, the leader of Australia’s best known anti-immigration party, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, argued that not all non-white migration was a problem. Indians, Hanson said, were good migrants to Australia because they work hard and assimilate.
Hanson is not the first far-right, anti-

The Indian city Ayodhya recently once again turned into a saffron fortress.
The BJP seems set to fight the 2019 elections by rallying its factions and allies to assert the Hindutva agenda and further politicising Hindu-Muslim relations.
More than 50,000 supporters of the Hindu Right,

Ties between India and Australia have always been a little constrained – and unsurprisingly so, as traditionally there has been little to connect the two countries. For its part, Australia has for decades sought to have a better relationship with India, one that extends beyond shared democracy,

The recent decision by the government of Pakistan and India to build a corridor from Indian Punjab to Kartarpur in Pakistan has raised hopes for the revival of a dialogue between the countries.
The Kartarpur corridor will be built over a 4km stretch and will enable Sikh pilgrims from India to

Could there be a silver lining to India’s choking air pollution? A recent report from the World Health Organisation showed India with 9 of the 10 worst cities in the world for atmospheric pollution. Even more breathtaking was the fact that New Delhi, most often in the news for its abysmal air

You don’t hear much about India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands aside from tourism or tribes. The islands, which make up one of India’s seven union territories, are a remote archipelago in the Bay of Bengal, about halfway between Thailand and India. They have traditionally been highly protected

India has enjoyed a bumper crop, with record high agricultural production in 2017–2018. India is the world’s largest producer of millets and the second largest producer of rice and wheat.
But this doesn’t help a family living in a slum on the outskirts of Trivandrum, deep in the

India and Japan have forged a special strategic and global partnership over the years, and Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe have developed a personal and special relationship, propelling the relationship between the two nations to greater heights.
Last month, Abe invited Modi to his

Facebook, having learned the devastating consequences of its platform being misused to manipulate democratic process is taking no chances ahead of next year’s national elections in India. The organisation this month announced it is amassing a task force of specialists to reduce the chance of

An awkward scene unfolded earlier this month in Lonavala, a hill town in the west of India. A group of men claiming to represent a regional political party, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), entered a house where a reality television game show called “Bigg Boss” is filmed. They handed over a

When people discuss Indo-Russian relations, they generally focus on Russia’s arms sales to India. However, India’s energy relations with Moscow also possess considerable and, arguably, growing significance.
This was revealed at the latest bilateral summit this month during Vladimir Putin

In the last few decades, state-making projects have transformed life in the Himalaya. Infrastructure development intended for troop deployment along disputed borders has, more recently, enabled large-scale transport and extraction projects and a tourist rush in this globally influential region

The bitter legacy of the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 continues to be an impediment to normal relations between Pakistan and India. Proper and meaningful diplomacy between Bangladesh and Pakistan remains elusive nearly 50 years after the war of 1971. India and Bangladesh remain

Long considered the crowning jewel of the fleet, India has continuously operated an aircraft carrier for well over half-a-century. Since 1961, when its first carrier entered service, India has gone to war with Portugal (1961), China (1962), and Pakistan (1965, 1971, and 1999).
How is it then, that

Some years ago, I took a domestic flight in India on one of the many new airlines that had cropped up over the preceding decade. The flight was on time and smooth, the food was good, the flight attendants friendly, attentive and courteous, their designer uniforms gleaming.
All was fine with the

It has been dubbed the world’s biggest experiment in universal health care.
Last Sunday, India launched its A$2.2 billion universal health care plan that was promised in the budget earlier this year. It gives 100 million of its poorest people access to free health care to treat serious ailments

As the world’s eyes are focused on the unfolding Rohingya refugee crisis Bangladesh, to the east in India another danger may be brewing for the Rohingya Muslim community.
Over the past year since the latest wave of state-backed violence and displacement began in northern Myanmar, almost a

Last month, the Indian Navy conducted the largest ever disaster relief and rescue operation under its Southern Naval Command, part of an effort to rescue thousands of people affected by the devastating floods that ravaged the coastal state of Kerala.
Known as Operation Madad, the navy led a

Crossing the China-Nepal border via Tibet and the Himalayas is as formidable as it has been for centuries. To drive from Tibet’s capital city Lhasa to the Gyirong checkpoint bordering Nepal’s Rasuwa takes at least 15 hours – if weather condition allows. That is why, during my meeting with

After talks had been delayed previously owing to domestic developments in the US, causing much disappointment in India, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense James Mattis finally arrived in New Delhi last week for meetings with their counterparts in India – Foreign

A new threat from beyond its borders looms over Bangladesh. With as many as nearly a million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar having already taken shelter in the south-eastern part of the country, there is now bad news filtering in from the neighbouring Indian state of Assam.
The state, recently

A statue to honour Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the Indian king crowned in 1674 and founder of the Maratha Empire, was first suggested in 2004. The driver then was a coalition of Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, but it wasn’t until the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government

In India, a recently-released report ranking the states by their governance levels has once again highlighted the great disparities between north and south.
The Public Affairs Index 2018, released last month by the Bengaluru-based think tank Public Affairs Centre, ranked states by how well

On 17 July, the Supreme Court of India was moved to condemn the recent spate of lynchings across the country as “horrendous acts of mobocracy … which cannot be allowed to become ‘the new normal’”. The justices had gone straight to the heart of the matter. The loss of so many innocent lives

Campaigners in India fighting against female genital mutilation prevalent among members of the Muslim Dawoodi Bohra community are growing more optimistic for a ban against the inhumane practice.
The long-term health effects of FGM include pain during menstruation and sexual intercourse

India is ranked a “major power” in the Lowy Institute’s new Asia Power Index. The Index sifts through more than 100 indicators across eight different measures to create a unique ranking of the relative power of 25 Asian countries.
And for New Delhi, the analysis by and large looks

At a recent event in New Delhi, Nikki Haley, US Ambassador to the United Nations, called Iran “the next North Korea” and urged India to rethink its relationship with the Islamic Republic. This was followed shortly afterwards by an American delegation, led by Assistant Secretary for Terrorist

Few people are as qualified as Peter Varghese to draw up a timely, sound, and realistic blueprint to build a dynamic yet sustainable economic partnership between India and Australia.
Unlike the case with China, an expanded trade and investment relationship with India will enhance Australia’s

In India, it’s all about the age of 25: that’s the median age of the entire country, and there are 600 million Indians, more than half the population, who are aged 25 or younger. Young people are everywhere you look: on the streets, in offices, in shops, on campuses, and bring with

Peter Varghese’s independent report on Australia’s economic strategy for India, released by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last week, sounds a confident note for the future of the relationship. Although the focus of the report is trade, geopolitical alignments are one of three

This article first appeared on The Interpreter in December 2017. On 5 July this year, the Sri Lankan Minister for Civil Aviation, Nimal Siripala de Silva announced that Sri Lanka and India were finalising the terms of a joint venture that would give

In one of India’s crowded government hospitals, Thankappan*, a middle-aged man, lies in a vegetative state. His entire body seems frail, and his lips are discoloured. Thankappan’s wife and two daughters are watching over the family’s sole earner in the hospital.
Anti-smoking

In a recent Interpreter article (Glug, glug, glug: India’s interest in unsinkable aircraft carriers), David Brewster poses an interesting question: is there a cheaper and less risky way for India to project power in the neighborhood than by continuing to rely on its aircraft carriers?
By

On 20 May, India’s government notified the World Health Organisation of a confirmed outbreak of Nipah virus in Kozhikode, a district in Kerala, after test samples examined by the National Institute of Virology in Pune. By the end of the month, 19 cases of the disease had

It is unusual to apologise for something that did not happen, such as a made-up story. But this is what occurred after “The Blood of Romeo”, a recent episode of the US ABC Studios television show Quantico, aired on 1 June.
The episode’s plot sparked protests by marginal

Former Australian prime minister Paul Keating once recounted describing to an American admiral the sound a US aircraft carrier would make in a major fight: “Glug, glug, glug”.
Keating’s words reflect the scepticism of many analysts about the vulnerability and cost of

Perhaps the biggest casualty of the current state of India–Pakistan relations has been Kashmir, where issues regarding territory, autonomy, and cross-border confrontations have been a long-standing flashpoint between the two countries.
Recent times have seen total disregard&

Sometimes what politicians don’t say is as important as what they do say. So it was with Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi’s keenly anticipated keynote at the Shangri-La Dialogue this year.
The speech could have been fiery, as Modi’s rhetoric often is in front of a domestic audience. But

More than 1800 children aged between one month and six years old languish in Indian jails, growing up with their imprisoned mothers.
The plight of these guiltless children has long been known in India, but recent investigations by a human rights lawyer in the state of Odisha, on

The “informal summit” in Wuhan, China, between India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping last month generated a wave of commentary in India, China, and further afield.
The Chinese media played it up, heralding a major breakthrough in

In 2017, the “Indo-Pacific” emerged as a defining geopolitical construct tying the future of states from East Africa to East Asia together with big powers, such as the US, China, India, and Japan.
While Beijing has grabbed headlines in its quest to dominate the eastern part of this